2016

Go with the flow or swim against the tide? Bizangos is a nocturnal tale that questions humanity’s relationship to the collective, our place in the group and our capacity for the unspeakable. Bizangos is an opera in the ruins, an opera in the fields, a musical theater piece that pursues our long-term exploration of trance music, sacred songs, and syncretic rituals.

The show is a reflection on the crowd, its power, its movement. Who are we inside it? Are we just elements that contribute to its energy, that make up its power? Are we passive individuals who let ourselves be carried along by its flow, contributing to the act it commits and losing all control?

Bizangos: from dawn to dusk of humanity. Performed by the light of flames and bedside lamps, this wandering show—which combines singing, theater, and clowning—immerses the audience in a fairy-tale world, an allegory of the blissful state of nature overtaken by war.
A two-hour aesthetic reflection on the place of each individual when civilization, with its chaos, frenetic pace, and cruelty, disrupts the natural order and the placid, cyclical song of humanity’s early ages. An encounter with shadow people who sing and dance the tears of the world. A plunge into the night and into oneself, where one freely allows oneself to be imprisoned.
—Le Journal de Saône et Loire, July 2016

Based on an adaptation of Christa Wolf’s novel Kassandra, Bizangos remains a major work in the company’s history. This operatic form, with its unique instrumentation and repertoire of songs performed by 18 actors, incorporates a tragic choir of 40 to 80 amateur singers.

This monumental project has previously been created in several unusual spaces: at night in the middle of a forest, in a port, in a recently decommissioned military base in Austria, in empty exhibition halls, corridors, and basements of the Mucem in Marseille, in the agricultural communities in the Lot region, and in the landscapes of Pennabilli, Italy…

The work has been adapted and created in French and Italian and was in the process of being adapted into English. It is no longer an active project for us, but we would love to breathe life back into it. The show would now need to be reworked, but we’d love to…

Distribution
  • Conception projet / auteur / mise en scène : Julien Marchaisseau
  • Texte : Cassandre de Christa Wolf / traduit de l’allemand par Alain Lance et Renate Lance-Otterbein
  • Scénographie : Adrien Maufay
  • Costumes : Anne-Sophie Boivin, Mafalda Da Camara, Jacqueline Hamilton
  • Facteur d’instruments : Martin Bläse et Julien Tribout
  • Arrangements des chants / direction de chorale : Alexandra Satger
  • Composition et arrangements musicaux : Julie Avril, Donata Lelleri, Xavier Marguin, Vincent Salagnac, Alexandra Satger
  • Conception paysage sonore / musique électroacoustique : Jérémy Perrouin
  • Régie générale : Sébastien Castelain
  • Construction : Adrien Maufay et Mathias Combes
  • Eclairages : Olivier Brun, Chloélie Cholot-Louis, Thomas Hua
  • Pyrotechnie : Marianne Pibault
  • Comédien.ne.s-musicien.nes : Julie Avril, Anne-Sophie Boivin, César Bouteau, Olivier Boyer, Mireille Brun, Jérémie Charras, France Davin, Pierrick De Salvert, Cyril Fayard, Donata Lelleri, Xavier Marguin, Pierre Mougne, Wilda Philippe, Vincent Salagnac, Alexandra Satger, Florent Thiollier, Julien Tribout
  • Equipe technique exploitation : Sébastien Castelain, Jérémy Perrouin, Adrien Maufay, Marianne Pibault, Olivier Brun, Mathias Combes, Chloélie Cholot-Louis, Thomas Hua